Celebrating Halloween with GT Concepts

I have really high expectations for my kids. Call me a Grinch, but my kiddos can't just get away with having a simple Halloween party.  I try to incorporate some sort of educational activity into anything they do. Our students were allowed to dress up for Halloween, so I had them dress up as literary characters. They chose a character, wrote a few sentences from their Perspective (my favorite was Charlotte from Charlotte's web who saw the world differently because she had 8 eyes and it was harder to walk because she had 8 legs, and oh yeah, she wanted less babies :).  Then they used Unanswered Questions to come up with a few things they still wondered about the story character.  Parents were invited to come watch and the kids had an opportunity to practice their public speaking skills. It's amazing how quiet and shy some students appear standing in front of people, when we know they are not quiet and shy on a regular basis!

Ethics

My kids love ethics! I think it's partly because it makes them feel older to discuss such "heavy" concepts. I try to guide them in discussions almost daily that pertain to this topic. It's easy to relate to characters in a story. We read a cute, little story called The Fox and The Falling Leaves about a fox who is just incredibly disturbed that his favorite tree is losing all its leaves. He tries to save them, but to no avail. There is one adorable illustration with the leaf tucked into the bed next to him as he slept. The ending is kind of abrupt and not at all what I expected, but the children enjoyed it.

After reading the story I asked the kids to write about whether or not it is "right" or "wrong" that the leaves fall off the trees. I got several really insightful answers: Right- because it lets new leaves grow, it makes things more beautiful. Wrong-because it gives us more leaves to rake or makes the trees look uglier-were just a few responses.

Giving Creativity a Chance

This month we talk about all the creepy crawlies out there. Do you know what sends shivers down my spine? Walking past a classroom and hearing a teacher stamp out their student creativity. I still remember my mentor teacher instructing me that I need to be more explicit in my directions of how to make a turkey; because some of my students didn't color theirs brown-I had purples and reds. For me, there was nothing wrong with that; this teacher couldn't believe I would hang up such monstrosities. The kids get so used to a teacher telling them how to do it, what colors to use-they lose that sense of creating the image they have in their minds.

Unless we're doing a science activity, where we are recording the details of something real; my kids have free reign over their work. When they ask me what color to use to make the bat, my answer is always "you are the artist, you decide." It might be kind of selfish on my part because I really just love to see the different things they can come up with. After studying bats for a week, they wrote some bat poems and made a very simple paper plate bat cave and construction paper bat. Look at all the different ways they came up with to do it though! How boring the world would be if everyone did everything the same way. I encourage my kids to create something original, something unlike any other project in the room. I get funny looks from other teachers, but at least I let my students' artistic voices come through and if it can come through on a project-imagine in their writing, or when they come up with a new way to do math. These are our future designers, architects, teachers-they should have some originality up their sleeves.

Multiple Perspectives

I actually think this is one of the easiest standards of Depth and Complexity to teach...unless of course, you are teaching to little ones who see the world as it revolves around them! :) If you do lessons on it often enough, however, they will get the hang of it. We have already written this year from the perspective of everything from a barn to a pumpkin.

After finishing our first chapter read-aloud The Wizard of Oz, I was looking for a project for them to complete as kind of a culmination to our activities. I had them choose one character, make a likeness using a wire hanger and construction paper, then write about the adventure from that character's perspective. The favorite choice of the kids was Toto, of course, he did have a different perspective from everyone else being so close to the ground most of the time. I ask them to put themselves in that character's shoes--what do you see, hear, feel, what do you dream about? They did a pretty good job coming up with some unique viewpoints.

Recreating Old Sayings

My students aren't very familiar with a lot of sayings -"two wrongs don't make a right", "the early bird catches the worm". As a different kind of writing assignment I gave them the beginnings of some of these old adages and asked them to finish them. They had: A rolling stone...., A bird in the hand...., and A stich in time..... I thought several of them had very creative responses. I was very surprised one of them actually referred to the rock band The Rolling Stones--thank goodness for the rock video games! :)

Justifying An Opinion

Also a hard thing for young children to do. How often do we hear "because" as a response to why a child believes a certain way? Another project spinning off the Wizard of Oz; in the story the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow debate the importance of needing a brain or a heart. Both make intriguing arguments. I asked the students to choose a side and then justify their opinion-to give a reason for that belief. This is the first time we have done anything like this, so they will get better, but I thought it was a pretty good first attempt-we may have some future lawyers in this bunch!

Creative Family Trees

We have been working on a Family Unit and I wanted the students to do an exercise purely for the sake of creativity. I wanted them to invent a new way to track a family, instead of a family tree, something else to use. I emphasized to them that no two papers should look the same, that everyone should have an original idea. We saw family treehouses, family pools, family flowers. Here are a few more examples: